PITTSBURGH—Looking to identify the next generation of tools and services that can help measure and analyze social media data, Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III College and comScore, a global leader in measuring the digital world, will hold a case competition beginning April 1.

The “comScore/Heinz College Innovation in Social Media Analytics Case Competition” is open to teams of master’s degree students from within CMU’s Heinz College, Tepper School of Business and School of Computer Science. Students will form innovation teams that have 40 hours to develop ideas for new products. The top five teams will be invited to pitch their ideas to a team of judges from CMU and comScore, including comScore’s chief marketing officer.

Heinz College’s collaboration with comScore is another indicator of its leadership role in computational social science initiatives. Earlier this month, the college announced a partnership with Singapore Management University to create the Living Analytics Research Center, a $47 million initiative to develop new techniques to acquire and analyze data on consumer and social behavior and create applications that will benefit consumers, businesses and society. Last year, Heinz College partnered with Cognizant to create the Center for the Future of Work, which will research how social technologies will influence how organizations work in the 21st century.

“The immense volume of social media data generated by Facebook, Twitter and other online social channels can reveal trends, identify issues and deliver real value for organizations,” said Ari Lightman, practice professor of digital media and marketing at Heinz College. “We are excited to be working with comScore on this competition and look forward to some great product ideas.”

Teams will be required to register for the competition at http://hnz.cm/comscore2011. The case will be distributed only to registered teams, and the first 20 teams registered will be allowed to submit proposals for consideration. From those submissions, the top five teams will be invited to create presentations to pitch their ideas. A $5,000 prize will be divided among the top three teams.